By Flashes Of Lightning
by Bialy
Summary: At first, Sayu Yagami didn't know why she wasn't speaking. But the answer was never far, or hard to find. Mello/Sayu.
1. Grace Under Pressure

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note. Lyrics are 'Your Ex-Lover Is Dead' by Stars. The theme of this pairing, I swear. Title quote is Wilde. 'His style is chaos illuminated by flashes of lightning'. How's THAT for pseudo-academic.

Note: I…don't even know. I started off trying to write Mello/Sayu. Then I started writing first person, which I hate and never use. Then, it spiralled, and it's not a one-shot anymore. Nor is it what I wanted or intended it to be. Instead, it is this. And to be frank with you, I have no idea how it has turned out.

x

**By Flashes Of Lightning**

**One: Grace Under Pressure**

**-**

_There's one thing I want to say_

_So I'll be brave_

_-_

Sayu Yagami didn't know why she wasn't speaking.

Perhaps it would be more accurate (and I wish to transcribe these events accurately, because if nothing else, _this_ should be preserved, pressed between the pages of a history much larger than both of them) to say that Sayu Yagami did not know _at first_. As events progressed, and I have gleaned this knowledge from third-party reports and her own sad scribbling, I believe she came to realise precisely why she had not been speaking, and that she made a conscious decision to continue in silence. If my reasoning is correct, it is quite possible he will remain silent for months, perhaps year. There is a possibility that she will remain silent forever; however, this is only a slender chance, and I would ask my reader to pay it little heed.

I am being needlessly mysterious, and to the aforementioned reader, I would like to apologise. It was not my intention, and I would have been more than content to start this in a more clinical fashion, or file it away as an official document. My reasons for not doing so, despite this being so out of character for me, are based in idle thought and useless sentiment. They centre around two envelopes, each containing papers. One contained drawings, scratchings on paper barely worth a second glance. The other contained notes on a series of murders that occurred several years ago, prefaced by a boy I believe I would never heard from again.

My name is not something of any real relevance, but my identity, for those to whom it means something still, is Near. This preface is relatively meaningless - as I have stated, it may have been better, and certainly more my 'style' (if I can be said to possess such a thing) to prepare this more as a report; impersonal, concise, relevant. Upon reflection I decided that not one of the adjectives fits, even loosely, the people whose story it has fallen on me to transcribe. The revelation led me to adopt this more difficult, even irritating method of writing. It has led me to include this pointless preface, out of some compulsion to emulate my almost-partner and self-styled runner-up's efforts in documenting the LABB killings.

I have no concept of how long a piece like this should run on for, nor where or if there is an accepted cut-off point. This being said, I will select this point to begin the acting 'telling of the tale', perhaps leaving this prematurely and perhaps too late. I neither know, nor, if I am honest, care.

Because I am not writing this for you.

I am writing it for them.

-

I met Sayu Yagami when she was twenty-three years old. The fact that it was at this age her brother perished did not escape my notice, but I saw little relevance in it. A string of events involving incompetence on a grand scale and a string of coincidences left us in the same building at the same time. We did not speak to each other. I am taciturn by nature, and she, I later found out, was effectively a mute. She was, and remains to this day, the brown haired girl sitting next to me, with the pretty face and the vacant, trusting eyes.

I met Mello many years before. Our first meeting essentially consisted of vicious remarks and plaintive stares, on his side and mine respectively. The remainder of our time in each other's presence progressed in much the same way. Our parting shot (we did not think of it as such at the time, though we both had our suspicions) was our final challenge to each other, before he blazed into oblivion and I slipped into obscurity. In my more idealistic moments, there are many things I wonder about what could have been, out in the edges of 'maybe's and 'what if's, but now is neither the time nor the place to discuss them.

What I am trying to convey, in this uncharacteristically awkward fumbling of mine, is a background to how it is I came to be writing these events. Shortly after my 'meeting' with Sayu Yagami, I inquired as to who she had been. I ran a background check, out of curiosity more than anything else, I told myself. Though, perhaps buried deep in my rationale, there was a spark of desire to find something, someone, connected to Mello, a being still living that remembered him with something other than hatred and anger). I discovered the radical shift on her personality that had occurred after she had been kidnapped by Mello's gang, and told myself that it would be an opportunity for information-gathering, filling blanks in my knowledge. Of course, the truth was, that I had found my link to Mello, and I wished to exploit it.

The reader must accept as givens, at this point, my sentiments towards Mello. For reference, these were respect, wariness, and a strange, undeniable affection. It might be possible, if I were of a different demeanour, to say that I viewed him as an older brother. Granted, the type of older brother that pushed you down stairs and broke your toys, and resented you for being the favoured child, but a brother nonetheless. I am hesitant to discuss the history between myself and Mello at the best of times, and this is no different: this is as far as I will go and as much as I will say. For its relevance here, it is to explain my interest in Sayu Yagami.

I tracked her down with little difficulty. I learnt her routine, I made my introductions through the Japanese taskforce. Her mother allowed me access to her, believing the story she was given that I was some kind of child-prodigy psychiatrist, who could try to relate to her daughter and pull her out of the shell she had encased herself in.

My second meeting with Sayu, then, occurred across a kitchen table, as May sunlight filtered through lazily-closed blinds and flowers swayed in a light breeze outside, in an altogether picturesque and ridiculous setting. I did not drink the glass of milk in front of me, and rolled a dice, and she folded her hands in her lap and studied the embroidered table cloth. After thirty five minutes I informed her mother that I had not made progress, but had opened an avenue to do so, and would be returning within the week.

After my third such visit, Mr Aizawa of the taskforce presented me with a bulky manila envelope. Upon opening it, I found a series of drawings. Doorways, guns, a rotating room…and Mello. Badly drawn, barely recognisable, but the same live, coiled fire that resided in everything he did shone through the pencil and biro lines.

The drawings were from Sayu. There was no note.

It is my assumption that this was her first clumsy attempt at communicating with me. I do not know why, particularly, she decided I was worth trusting with her story; if it was some trace element left on me from my years spent in Mello's presence, or some intuition I was not aware of. Regardless, once I had received those drawings, I made my decision. I returned to her home, and took my seat opposite her. I did not try to catch her gaze. I opened my mouth, closed my eyes, and began to talk about Mello.

-

Neither Mello nor I are 'glass at half capacity' (be it full or empty) kind of people. My urge is to either empty or fill the glass, having no preference as to which, to resolve the ridiculous quandary people have managed to set for themselves for centuries. Mello's approach is to smash the glass.

Both achieve the same end - the removal of the question, the solution to a problem - both tackle it in an unorthodox way. One makes the person involved look mildly obsessive-compulsive, and the other displays traces of psychosis. It is a simple analogy, but one that I believe accurately sums up both myself and Mello, and our relation to each other. Two people - two boys, we were then - the same in all the essentials, but with radically different approaches, vastly different solutions to the same problem.

In the end, that makes more difference than one thinks.

-

The next time I visited Sayu, she presented me with another drawing. They reminded me vaguely of a child's scribbles, as he tries to replicate what he has seen or been told to see by his parents. They served a similar purpose - to convey an intention or image the artist was too ineloquent to convey through words. In Sayu's case, it was the self-imposed muteness that led to her ineloquence.

The drawing was, again, of Mello. Something was conspicuously absent, though - I identified the missing object as the rosary he had worn, his parody of a religion he had privately redefined. I looked up at Sayu, in case she intended to offer a reason for this discrepancy with her other drawings.

She brought her hand to her neck and moved her cloth robe aside. Hanging around her neck was a rosary. Its beads were white - obviously not the same rosary Mello wore - but the implication was clear. The beads were absent in the picture in order to make me look for them. The beads were shown to be present around her neck. A link.

I inclined my head, demonstrating my understanding. There were several other sheets of paper around Sayu; she seemed to have been seated at the table for a while before I had arrived. I asked if I could look at them, and she slid them over.

This girl was far from catatonic. She responded, created puzzles, remembered him from one meeting to the next…she was clearly not right, but it was equally clearly not some stupor to be woken from. She was…broken? To use an unnecessarily artistic turn of phrase, it was as if something inside her had slipped out of place, and so many things were colliding within her that it was easier, more convenient, to stop talking, and let the things inside her flow along their paths.

Inspection of the pictures revealed the same thing I had found in the batch she had sent me. All were of the same bare, inelegant style, but the effort spent on the ones depicting Mello shone through. The lines were darker, deeper, had been corrected to try to make it more life-like. And the same energy flickered along those lines, the same energy that crackled under Sayu's skin, fizzling out before it reached the surface.

Coupled with the rosary, I was willing to jump to conclusions and draw the obvious inference.

"You cared for him." The words sounded clichéd and a little demeaning, but they were true. Sayu blinked up at me.

"He cared for you."

She tilted her head to the side. A human being cannot be expected to know precisely what another human being was feeling at a given point in time, but I required her to make an assumption.

Slowly, she nodded.

"I understand."

I am not one for physical gestures of affection or understanding. In most circumstances, words are sufficient, and in those where they are not, my input is generally not required. That day, I placed my hand on Sayu's. A meaningless gesture, overused and overvalued, but…I meant it.

She turned her hand over beneath mine, and brushed her fingers against mine. It was not tender; more, it was a link of understanding. Shared acknowledgement that in Mello, we had both found the same thing - the same brilliance, drawing one in like moths to a flame. The same arrogance, getting under the skin in ways nothing else could. The same inexorable, desperate sadness when, after mere hours in his company, you realise that he is doomed to disintegrate, disappear, burn up on the face of his own radiant sun.

It occurred to me, at last, why Sayu's silence had gone beyond the periods of shock and sadness, and pervaded these times of peace and support. I finally saw it for what it was: a tribute, a framed memory, an acknowledgement that the last true conversation she held - and would ever hold, given the choice - was with a blond boy made of fire and leather, somewhere underground in America.

I realise that this sounds theatrical. I also realise that the excuse I offer up is meaningless: that you did not know Mello, and therefore, you cannot understand what I mean. It is a trite and bothersome explanation that presupposes lack of imagination and narrow-mindedness, but nevertheless, it is all I can put forward. In your life, you may encounter a person like this - the one who lights things up, ignites an atmosphere, blazes forward with no regard for consequences or failure until they stop landing on their feet, and crash into flames and glass.

I can promise you this: you will not be the same, ever after.


	2. The Bad Unhappily

Disclaimer: Still don't own it. Lyrics still Stars.

Note: Quick, no? I have the ideas for the fic sorted and want to hash them out before they fade away and I end up backburner-ing it and running the risk of never going back to it. So in all likelihood, the third (and potentially final) part is up before the end of the weekend.

I know this style doesn't let me get across a lot of emotion. It hampers the storyline, binds my hands and insults the characters. But it's a fun ride for me anyway. I'll get back to being a good writer after this. Proms.

x

**Two: The Bad Unhappily**

_Live through this_

_And you won't look back_

In theory, everything can be tested. In real life, time is so much more limited, links so much more tenuous. In real life, the sad truth is that things fall apart.

When this occurs, in the heat of battle or the middle of a carefully-formed plan, it is the duty of those in charge to piece them back together as quickly as possible, while charging forward all the while. Problems arise, and must be tackled using diverse and quickly-formed strategies. Unfortunately, in order to keep up the necessary speed of reaction, diversity is often sacrificed and people fall back on their own personal brand of problem-solving.

If we return to my analogy of how Mello and I would respond to the "glass at half capacity" problem, and apply that analogy to the real-life problem of the Kira case, the actions one might surmise of us are essentially the ones that we took. In my patience and preparation, I developed the plan that brought Light Yagami to his knees, and ended his self-styled deification. Mello started with kidnap and ended by smashing things - specifically, churches and trucks.

The fact of the matter is simply that my method had less casualties. I am not referring to the deaths of Mello, Matt and Takada, for one could look at my plan and say I was responsible for Yagami, Mikami and, eventually, Amane going the same way. No, the casualties I refer to her are the auxiliaries, the accessories - the ones who didn't even need to have been involved. I refer, specifically and obviously, to Sayu.

Her kidnapping led to so much more. It embroiled her in the case she had worked so hard to extricate herself from, it had burdened her with an overwhelming feeling of guilt in regards to her father's death. More than this, it had brought her to Mello. And after that, no one could have been the same.

Mello selected Sayu as his second kidnapping victim because she was "the daughter of police Chief Yagami". To begin with, she was a bargaining tool, one with more clout that an obese old man in charge of directing bureaucratic troops. The fact that she was Kira's sister is, of course, what allowed the plan to succeed, but one must admire Mello's ability to step up to the plate and reform his plans when they went wrong, targeting a personal instead of professional victim.

The problem with personal victims, though, is they are usually not professions. In fact, this is practically a given. Switching from Yagami's boss to his daughter was a smart move, certainly, but it came with complications. Personal hostages are, to my knowledge, less well-behaved. They have not been schooled in how to respond in such a situation; they are panicked, emotional, even angry. They will scream at you and shout at you and try to drag you down with them, and for someone whose emotional state is so naturally volatile, like Mello, this can do more than fan potential flames.

It pours on kerosene, and dances round the blaze naked chanting Pagan rhymes.

-

On the eleventh of October, 2009, Sayu Yagami went to college, spent a couple of hours in the evening out with friends, took the same route home she always did, and was bundled into the back of a van by a pair of mafia thugs.

Events change us. In a way (and here, I am afraid I lapse into theatrics and melodrama again) the original Sayu died that day, and was 'forged anew', in the furnaces of a dirty mafia hideout scented with gunpowder and chocolate. The situation required her to put her faith completely and totally in other people, for perhaps the first time in her life. However dependent on others people may regard themselves as being, it is not until a gun is pressed against your forehead that you truly understand the meaning of having your fate in another's hands.

Sayu's only way out was for her father to deliver the Death Note. Whether or not Mello would have killed Sayu had he not, I do not know. Mello was capable of many things, but murdering an innocent young woman, one whom he had come to care for, is something I doubt he would have chosen to do. But with the stares of twenty other armed gunmen on him, I cannot speak for what his actions may have been.

And so, Soichiro Yagami travelled to the hideout, delivered the Death Note, and rescued his daughter. This action, of course, had repercussions spreading far greater than a simple hostage trade-off. Today, those actions are irrelevant. What matters here is Mello and Sayu, and to some lesser extent, almost a footnote, myself. It was Mello's desire to better me, succeed where I would fail, that spurred him to such criminal lengths.

What is it they say about a butterfly flapping its wings?

By the fourteenth of the month, Sayu was back in Japan and my team was slaughtered. The events that progressed in those two days are, in this section, what must be discussed.

Up until this point, what we have essentially been dealing with are facts. Unequivocal, quantitative, inferences and emotion supplied by only what is clear and true. From here, the depths become murkier, truth blends into uncertainty. I have no record of what transpired between the pair, I have no recordings, no solid evidence.

My information comes from Sayu. It is incomplete, perhaps embellished by her, and perhaps misinterpreted by me. Unwilling or unable (the difference is only semantics, after all) to speak her story, it was told across scraps of paper and smudged pencilled sentences, passed across her kitchen table. In broken, corrected English, interspersed with Japanese and the odd illustration, Sayu Yagami began to tell her tale.

-

It started, quite obviously, with the kidnapping. Dragged from her home, forced onto a plane blindfolded, cowering in terror in a side seat. Blinded, disorientated and terrified, Sayu Yagami made her first trip to the USA.

When the blindfold was removed, she had already been forced to her knees and felt something cool and hollow press against her neck. Her senses had been assaulted by a barrage of colour and smell, all fluorescent lighting and sweat. Her first glimpse of Mello was of a boy probably younger than her, sprawled out on a leather chair and staring down at her with unconcealed smugness.

The first thing she had heard him say was, "Success, then! We're back on track."

Then, she had been dragged away, gagged and tied to a chair. The door to the room she had been taken to had slammed shut, leaving her alone in the dark and the silence. No one had come for an hour. She had been left to fear, confusion, and the memory of how armed mafia thugs had deferred to the blond in black.

When blinking figures on a digital clock (the only light in the room, displaying a time Sayu had no way of telling was real, but changed with the minutes at least) showed that far too long had passed, the door was knocked open again. Unceremoniously, a television was switched an and she was pushed in front of it, staring helplessly up at a camera phone that clicked once before being retracted.

This photograph is the one that was sent to Soichiro Yagami, and that was later discovered by a member of my team. As far as I can tell from Sayu's estimations and my own limited knowledge of how Mello may have proceeded, apart from this incident she was left alone for between twelve and fourteen hours, without food or reprieve from the straight back and hard seat of the chair.

After this point, it seems that Mello realised no one was tending to the prisoner, and that Sayu would be no good if she died of fear or starvation before Yagami even reached the hideout. Adopting the 'if you want something done, do it yourself' approach (a theory I have never put much faith in), he dragged the chair out of the room with Sayu still tied to it, depositing her in a large, open room a few storeys down.

The second thing he said to her was "Are you allergic to anything? You obviously need food and it's better if we don't give you stuff that makes you stop breathing."

Still disorientated, still terrified, and still gagged, Sayu gave no answer. Mello (and I presume at this point the sighed, for explanation was never one of his strengths) pulled up a chair, sat opposite her, and described, in full, the situation as it was.

It left Sayu no less terrified. Her life could pay forfeit if her father chose to stick to his guns and do his job, and may be taken regardless of his actions, despite Mello's apparent assurances that it would not be. Enlightenment, however, calms the savage beast or worried hostage far more effectively than any melody, and she managed to regain some composure.

Mello brought food. He removed her gag and unbound her hands for the duration of the meal. In those moments, and over the following days, as Sayu self-consciously spooned food into her mouth and Mello kept a gun lazily trained on her to ensure her compliance, they conversed.

Sayu refuses to tell me the exact nature of the conversations, or precisely what was contained therein. As near as I can tell, they exchanged stories, of his past and hers, of Kira, of college, on the mundane and the extraordinary. Why Mello would open up so much to a girl he expected to return to the 'enemy' within days I cannot fathom, except that to suggest that he experienced the same inexplicable feeling of trust flowing over from Sayu when she looked up at him that I did.

If that is indeed the case, then I find the potential for romance between them infinitely understandable.

I did not pry into the conversations more than this. I nodded, filed away her notes and bit back my questions, folded my arms, and asked her to continue.

-

The contact between Sayu and Mello, in those two days, was limited. It began as just meals, but by the time she was leaving, Mello was 'checking the hostage' far more than seemed necessary, given the frequency of his visits reported to me by Sayu. He would check her bindings, a thug standing in the doorway, and ask her if she needed to use the facilities. He would escort her, _personally_, casting a dirty look at his companion and saying that he didn't trust that Sayu would come back in the same state as he left her if he allowed the man to take her. He allowed her more privacy than the others would have, and guided her back by the elbow, fingers curled around soft skin.

Perhaps it began as Stockholm Syndrome, exaggerated by the fierce intensity and unusual quirks making up Mello's personality. His vague, hastily explained-away moves towards protecting her, his attentiveness to her in those days, seem to have fed into this. Perhaps it was simply what has begun to be termed 'one of those things', the _je ne sais pas_ that draws one person to another. Regardless, Sayu began to like Mello. Looking forward to his visits and appreciating his concern became actively wondering if she would ever see him again, and, in half-formed dreams, imagining the casual touches slipping into something else.

I am no expert on human affection, but I am an expert on Mello. As much as one can predict something that is inherently unpredictable, I am able to. And Mello's interest in Sayu - a mere hostage - the time he spent with her, the degree to which he bared his soul, indicates to me the same conclusion Sayu reached: that the feelings and ideas that had barely formed into true thoughts in her head were reciprocated, and a textbook kidnapping had twisted and tumbled into something much more.

But it was still a kidnapping, still a hostage situation, and that meant the trade-off was fast approaching. Yagami flew to LA, diverted, directed to the second underground base. Zakk Irius was at the ready, prepared to take the hostage to the second base and make the trade off. It was the thirteenth of October, and the time had arrived.

Mello came to the room alone and unarmed. He undid Sayu's bindings, pulling her up from the chair, fingers burning against her skin in touches that lingered too long. I believe it was the kind of atmosphere that fostered these things: high tension, extreme risk, mutual attraction, factors that bled into touches becoming caresses and Sayu being forced against a wall as a tongue probed her mouth.

Not to imply that she didn't reciprocate, however. In relating this to me (hesitantly, embarrassed) she seemed determined to ensure I did not gain the impression of Mello somehow forcing himself on her. In the end, it was a moment - no more than a minute - shared between them, heated, unspoken insinuations, low breaths and desperate touches.

I do not know if they spoke any parting words, before Sayu was bundled onto the helicopter and swapped for a notebook. If there were promises, farewells, murmurs or moans, they remain hidden from me, and lost to the world.

As they have every right to be.


	3. The Hope Stakes

Disclaimer: Not mine. Lyrics Stars. Quotes at end.

Note: I'm…not altogether happy with how this chapter turned out but I don't think I can rework it. This style was crazy difficult. Never again.

x

**The Hope Stakes**

_It's nothing but time and a face that you lose_

_I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose_

_-_

_I'm not sorry I met you._

_-_

In the days that followed Sayu's return to Japan, I am unqualified to speak of the events that transpired. On this matter, Sayu's notes are vague, and on the occasion I tried to ask her mother, I was greeted with sudden frostiness and hostility.

What occurred in that time I can only imagine. The aftershocks of guilt and fear the young woman may have been feeling, coupled with the very visible effect her kidnapping had had on her father, and, of course, her meeting with Mello, would have bound together in such a way that, if I am quite honest, makes me marvel that she can sit in front of me today.

Sayu Yagami is not, and never will be, as intelligent, charismatic or brilliant as her older brother was. But she is stronger.

-

Time passed. In that time, a very great number of things happened, things that tilted the world on its axis and began to rearrange the fates of mankind. To this story, however, the machinations of a murderer and the schemes against him are irrelevant. So for all intents and purposes, and what with one thing and another, time passed.

-

This story picks up again almost a month later, in the middle of the night outside a building in Los Angeles. The scene is set: from the building, screams erupt, and from their hiding place, five men in riot gear rise and run. The audience is a pair of spectres, untouched by explosions, and a man in a hotel room some miles away.

Of the night her father died, Sayu was told nothing. She slept, if fitfully, until her mother roused her, saying only that Soichiro Yagami was injured. By the time she and her daughter were dressed, the second call had come in, telling them not to bother catching a plane, because it was too late now anyway.

After several weeks, the taskforce returned to Japan. From what Sayu tells me, Touta Matsuda alone visited the family to convey his sorrow and regret. Her description of his visit seemed tinged with awkwardness, and I have inferred that Sachiko Yagami met him with howls and accusations rather than tears and vulnerability. She demanded to see her son, and was told he was not coming. The commotion brought Sayu downstairs, leaning on walls for support and clutching the banister like a lifeline. She arrived in time to see her mother hurl a mug at Matsuda, and to hear it crash into the wall behind him.

In a few seconds they caught sight of her and froze. Their expressions, she says, were equal parts shock and guilt. Her mother had moved forward to check if she was alright, but Sayu had kept her gaze focused on Matsuda. _This_ man could tell her, could shed some light on what had happened. She parted her lips, trying to focus on getting a sound out, but stopped, and closed her mouth again. She writes that despite the attempt, the idea seemed too foreign, too strange, to have her voice bounce around the walls of the kitchen and echo back to her, random sounds converging in communications.

Matsuda, however, took advantage of the sudden cease in Sachiko's onslaught to explain the events anyway. He told them that Soichiro had confronted Sayu's kidnapper, Mello, alone, had been shot at by a surviving member of the mafia group, and then when the taskforce had broken into the room, caught the full brunt of the ensuing explosion.

Sayu listened in silence as the story came together. Her father was dead, and with such facts - cold, stark truths - to fit into the picture, the full impact of this began to sink in. Her father…and Mello…had been in the explosion. Mello had caused the explosion.

As things begin to fit together into an image the human mind does not want to recognise, it blocks it out. Unpleasant truths are filed away behind the mechanics of every day life. But Sayu had no every day life to go back to, and her silence meant that she had only her own thoughts to enlighten her. The conclusion that Mello had killed her father was not hard to reach, but far, far harder to come to terms with.

I have never regarded Touta Matsuda as a particularly intelligent man. Upon hearing, however, that he thought it wise to tell Sayu, of all people, that the mission on which her father had died had had the aim of retrieving the notebook traded for the safety, I will confess to having lost any shred of respect for him. Already faced with the fact that the boy she had developed feelings for was responsible for her father's death, she was now forced to contend with the guilt of having been responsible for it herself.

I am not an emotional person. Nevertheless, the thought of being faced with such things, in a world that was becoming increasingly barren and alienated, sends a shiver even through my spine. Taking into account the fact that I was told Sayu was a particularly emotional young woman, it astounds me to see that she has come out of this with as much of her sanity intact as she has.

I do not know what to attribute it to. All I can say is that she has earned my respect, and my admiration.

-

At this point I can only guess at what happened concerning Mello. It is clear that he escaped the explosion either as it occurred or moments afterwards, for he was not found in the taskforce's albeit-cursory examination of the area. The next I heard of him, he was strolling into SPK headquarters with a gun against one of my team-mates' back.

Since that time, I have learnt that Lidner had contact with Mello some days before he made contact with me. Lidner seems determined not to reveal details of this time to me. Combined with her reaction to her death, this had made me wonder the precise nature of her feelings towards Mello. Did she, perhaps, come to care for him the same way Sayu did?

Could I blame her if she did?

-

After the scene he made at SPK headquarters, I never saw Mello again. I had a total of two phone conversations with him, and was updated on his well-being (if not his progress in the Kira-case, which would have been of more use) by a series of emails from Matt. It appears that at some point in late November, Mello accosted his childhood friend and convinced him to sign his life away on a fruitless endeavour. It was a fight Matt should never have been involved in, but I suppose I should not have been surprised by his inevitable presence. After all, who that knew Mello would turn down the chance to run with him?

Matt's emails may have been little more than medical updates merged with sardonic 'wish you were here's, but combining them with Sayu's scribbled narrative has provided a more rounded view of the situation. It has, at the very least, given me some insight into Mello's side of things.

For example, on the twelfth of December, I received an email from Matt containing the following line: "Mello seems weird. Evidence: I stole his chocolate and it took him twelve minutes to notice. He stares off a lot. Conclusion: Lovestruck?".

The next day, he visited Sayu at her home in Kanto.

Sayu was, understandably, shocked to see Mello framed in the doorway at past two in the morning. As mentioned, I may be no expert on these matters, but I genuinely believe that is the wrong way to go about wooing a woman. Conflicting emotions of her feelings for him and what he had done to her father battled each other out, and neither moved. When Mello shifted into the light, the scar disfiguring half of his face became evident and worry eclipsed any other emotions Sayu had been feeling. For the first time since her kidnapping, she let out a cry, and moving quickly, crossed the gap between them to push his hair back from his face and examine the raw wound.

She said, "What happened?" but then realised, and her question went unanswered.

He said, "I'm sorry," but knew it wouldn't cover it and didn't say anything else.

Mello did not stay long. He brought a hesitant hand up to touch her cheek, and when Sayu did not push him away, leant down to kiss her. After that, he left, promising to return.

It was three days before he did. He appeared in her doorway once more, and she greeted him with a sad smile and a tilt of the head. For the rest of the night, they simply talked. Sayu got used to her voice, trying out the familiar-but-forgotten sounds as Mello's hands played through her hair and light began to creep through the curtains. He left before morning broke properly.

Sayu writes that he visited her three more times that month, and that on Christmas, she had made her way out, alone, to a park near her house. Mello had met her there. They had walked, with her leaning against him for support. She describes this, almost bitterly, as the closest to normal things would ever be for either of them. He held her and repeated his apology, and she absolved him. To this day, she has not absolved herself.

-

On the twenty-fourth of January, Mello and Sayu met for the final time, and I received an email from Matt consisting of three words: "It's been fun."

Again, details escape me. I am more than aware that the somewhat-sketchy nature of my relation of these events has made me a less than reliable narrator. For this, I apologise. But as I said at the beginning of this document, it is written for their sake and not yours, and I will not plunder the memories Sayu preserves of a man who - for all the world's logic and sense of unfairness - she was essentially in love with, simply to please my reader.

But what I can say is that the meeting lasted three hours, took place in Sayu's bedroom, and involved both her first experience of sex and the last words she spoke.

Two days later, Mello died, and in memory, Sayu has kept her silence.

-

I questioned Sayu on her response to Mello's death. Her only answer was to wrap her hands around the rosary, and bow her head. I pried no further.

There are things in this world that none of us can understand. The reasons behind this story, the things that pulled a quiet Japanese girl and a bombshell of leather and fire together, are things that can only be wondered at. I will do them no disservice by attempting to rationalise it further, or by dissecting and pondering each element of their bare, half-formed romance. They had, in total, no more than a week together, and I will let what they have made of that stand as a testament to itself.

Instead, I will leave this story here. With the death of one of the pair, perhaps the dance is over, but while one still lives the trace of the tune will remain. In Sayu Yagami I have found, epitomised, the ideals of independence, rationality and emotion bound together in their purest forms (though, f this is where those ideals get a person - vitality and strength bound in casing of silence and sadness - then I, for one, want nothing to do with them). I have found a woman scarred by war and left on the edges of an explosion, ignored but far, so far, from unimportant.

She has lost father, brother and lover, along with any semblance of normality in her life. But, for what it is worth…she is still alive. After everything she has experienced she holds on, both to her sanity and her heartbeat, and that, above all else, must count for something.

Where there is life there is hope, after all, however hidden it may be.

X

After-note, woop: Argh. It's short and it's crappy and a let-down to a bad fic. But oh well. It's helped me get my head around Mello/Sayu a bit more, which means anything else I write will probably have this sequence of events as a backdrop. Needed to get one sorted so I didn't just resort to stealing keem's, which is conclusive and brilliant and difficult to pull away from. So, sorry, keem, if I kind of ended up ripping you off up there. YOU'RE TOO GOOD, DAMN IT.

Chapter titles have been quotes, so credit where credit is due:

"Courage is grace under pressure", Ernest Hemingway.

"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means", Oscar Wilde.

"Now the stale chips are up and the hope stakes are down" - The Libertines, 'Time For Heroes'

Also, would it be cool to do a spin-off of this actually detailing the relationship? You know, in a third-person 'able to actually say with confidence what went on instead of glossing over things and cutting out all inferences' kind of way. Or would that make me lame? I don't want to be lame. I want to be like the cool kids.

Hope it didn't make your eyes bleed. Bialy out.


End file.
